Bunn didn't want to run

Here's a first for me. I've spent the last three days trying to figure out why my Bunn 21J wouldn't run after I cleaned it. It ran nice until the leg of the 2nd wheel came up against the screw.

I found a screw in the wrong position!! I had the screws in reverse order in the cover that holds the winding ratchet wheel on the dial side.!!

Sure feels good to figure that out!

Doh...

Nothing worse than a stray piece of metal between some brass gears

I hope you found the problem relatively fast. I call self induced problems like that "banging your head into a wall". It never feels good until you stop.

Jim,
No, it wasn't fast. I had the mainspring barrel out 3 times before I saw it. I kept looking at the balance wheel thinking I had something wrong in that area. Sure is good to finally see what is wrong.

I assume the screws were different lengths?

Yep, they sure are. Next time I'll be more careful to put them back where they came from. I didn't even consider that they might be when I tore it down.

Well Dave, now that your fed up with it you can send it to me and I can use it for parts.

Patrick,
I'm not quite fed up yet, I've only had it running for about 4 hours now! But so far, she's keeping perfect time. I put it in this case for now.

That model Illinois as I remember pointlessly used a long and short screw set (rather than two short screws) to hold on the click wheel retainer plate. If the long screw was installed in the retainer plate screw hole near the middle of the movement (rather than the hole at the edge) then it would stop the watch when the main wheel spoke came around and engaged it.

Really fun experience. When we learn about thie little "tricks" we understand the many colorful names the watchmakers sometimes earned.